A: If you are both a writer and a professional illustrator, then what you will want to do is create a picture book dummy. I’m not an illustrator myself, but I can point you to a great article on how to make one.

http://www.yellapalooza.com/tutorials/dummies.html

If you’re only a writer, then follow the steps in my crash course to learn how to submit your picture book manuscript.

Add bookmark:

For more on rhyming picture books, you have to check out this transcript of an ICL chat with Shelly Becker on rhyming picture books. This is nitty-gritty stuff, man.

Happy reading,

Cynthea

Add bookmark:

I decided to classify this post so it applies to both PBs and longer works. If you’ve been following my Revision 9-1-1 articles, you’ve read a lot about “big” issues which crop up in manuscripts I’ve reviewed. But what’s contained in here is MORE IMPORTANT. Why? If an agent or editor senses you haven’t mastered the basics, your wonderful plot, brilliant characters, and awesome setting won’t matter. Remember how bitter and exhausted your slush-pile editor or agent might be? You could get slipped the form at page one! So watch out for these common pitfalls.

back-to-back-to-back adjectives

Yes, I will admit fantasy and historical fiction often has a very descriptive style. But this is what I mean (no matter what genre your book is)…

• Example: The tall, white, spotted dog sat on a polka-dotted straw mat.
• Solution: Examine your sentences. Might you find your sentence works just as well without a few of those adjectives? Yes, I think so. Why do adjectives irk people (including me)? They feel mechanical. Pushy. And controlling. And they can drag down your sentences. How quickly can a sentence like that be scanned without slowing your pace? Now picture four sentences like this with as many adjectives. OUCH! So pay attention! Your job is to provide TOUCHES of description, not necessarily the whole spiel. Trust your readers to have imaginations.

echo, echo, echo…

This is by far the biggest pain to correct and sometimes very hard to detect.

• Example: I looked at him. “Look, Frank. If you want to look for suspects, than you have to look here.”
• Solution: Can’t tell what’s wrong with this? Your ears need a workout then. READ YOUR MANUSCRIPTS OUT LOUD. It’s a lot easier to pick up on echoes that way. Eventually you will get so good at it, you will automatically fix them before you even write an echo down. Soon you will also learn six-thousand variants for the word look. I love the example above because I, myself, am a recovering look-aholic. A revised version of the above might be… “Look, Frank.” I picked up a book entitled BEST PLACES TO FIND SUSPECTS. “If you want to hunt someone down, this is what you read.”
• Echoes can appear between sentences, paragraphs, and pages. So don’t confine your search to the sentence itself. Read the work aloud and listen for those echoes.

serial as, when,-ing killers

• This is another variant of an echo. If you use a sentence pattern too often like AS I X’d, SHE Y’D. Or WHEN X Happened, Y happeend. Or I X’d, [INSERT VERB]+ing. It’s noticeable. You’re killing sentences with those echoes. Your reader will detect YOU. You don’t want to be detected. You want to be invisible so your reader can focus all his energy on reading your great book.
• Example: I ran to the door, panting. “It must be Tony,” I said, opening the door. But standing in front of me was Rick, holding a gun.
• Did you hear the -ing echo?
• SOLUTION: READ YOUR WORK ALOUD. AND SLOWLY. Are you noticing you love AS, WHEN, and/or -ING a bit too much? AS, WHEN, AND -ING phrases are the most abused I’ve seen in free-tiques. Learn to vary your sentence patterns. Also, don’t be afraid to use SIMPLE sentence structures. And fragments (GASP!). They are just as acceptable as more complicated structures.

bum words

Check your manuscript for words that aren’t earning their keep in your sentences.

• Examples: THAT, JUST, EVEN, Adverbs, Adjectives.
• Solution: Cut them or cut them down. Only use them when they have value in your sentence. You’ll find your writing will sound much tighter when you lose the bums. Also you might discover some of these words echo as well. If you love the word THAT and JUST, chances are, you have a thousand of them in your book. Send those bums packing!

!@#@~!–improper punctuation (or questionable punctuation)

• Classic punctuation mistakes mostly involve the comma. The most common one I’ve seen goes something like this…I ate, and went to the pool. Or…..The teacher, Mrs. Applethorn, called roll. The em dash, ellipse, semicolon and colon are also punctuation marks people can’t get a handle on.
• Solution: Brush up, people! Elements of Style is a great resource for this. You don’t want an editor or agent (trained on detecting writing faux pas) obsessing over your errant comma. If anything, you want them impressed with your ability to insert a REAL em dash in your manuscript.
• Granted, there are different standards for punctuation (especially for the comma). You can’t guess which standard the editor or agent will apply to your manuscript. So when in doubt, stick to one rule and be consistent throughout.

bad par
a
graph
ing

• This is when the paragraphs are all over the place. The author hasn’t quite worked out when to start or end a paragraph. Paragraphing dialogue seems to be problematic for many writers.
• Solution: Typically paragraphs change as speakers change and/or when the topic of discussion switches as well (like regular paragraphs). Read Self-Editing for Fiction Writers or Elements of Style. Also, examine real books if you’ve got one of those situations where a character is thinking while someone else is talking. Learn how to use paragraphing to your advantage, not to your detriment.
• Also, are all of your paragraphs GINORMOUS? What do you think an editor thinks when she sees an entire page that is only one paragraph? Long paragraphs may be a symptom of verbose or unclear writing. Tighten it up. Whack out the unnecessary. Restructure your work so the intent can be conveyed in readable bytes.

misplaced tags

• This is when the action and the dialogue are reversed. Example: “This coffee is awful.” I sipped from the mug. Wow, seems obvious, huh?
• I see this all the freaking time.
• SOLUTION: Make sure you’re paying attention to what you’ve written. Place special focus on your tags. Especially ones that are actions. See if it reads more logically when you reverse the sequence.

tag frenzy

• This is when the tags appear in every single line of dialogue. Or the tags are so distracting, it’s hard to pay attention to what is being said. What you get with too many tags is another variant of an echo. The words may not be the same but you’ll hear the “ping” and “pong” reverberating in your brain as you read it.
• Example:

I opened the can. “I was thinking about trying out of the soccer team.”

Mom emptied the dishwasher. “That’s nice, honey.”

I fed Fido. “So can we afford my uniform?”

Mom wiped her hands on a rag. “I don’t see why not.”

• SOLUTION: Space out your tags more randomly. Eliminate extras you don’t need. Watch for distraction. It takes an ear to get this right. So study real books. Learn from the masters. Read your stuff aloud until you’ve got this one down.

action fixations

• This is yet another variant of an echo. Too much of one thing calls out the writer. Do you find your characters “shrug” a lot? “Swallow” too much? “Breathe” enough for the entire population of China?
• SOLUTION: Vigilance is required again. Doing a “find” in WORD (Ctrl+F) will help you figure out if your MC swallowed only two pages ago. Watch for variants of the same action or from the same body part. I’ve noticed the “eyes” and “breathing” are very popular fixations. The “heart” is probably a close third. Again that is not to say you can’t use vital bodily functions in your book. Just don’t use them all the time. Change it up a little. Perhaps some of these actions could be substituted for unique thoughts. Left out entirely. Or changed up with a different body part?

concurrent actions which aren’t concurrent

• Once again the -ing, as, and when constructions can do some damage to your writing.
• Examples: Tripping down the steps, I landed in the bushes. Or. As I ran through the hall, I opened the door. Or. When I buckled my seatbelt, I started the engine.
• Solution: Focus on what you’re trying to say. Take a quick look at your as and when clauses. Check out those -ing participles. Did you really mean that? Don’t be afraid to lose the when or the as or the -ing. Write two independent sentences or a compound one. Or at the very least, use the correct construction. The revised examples might look like this…I tripped and landed in the bushes. OR. I ran down the hall. I opened the door. OR After I buckled my seatbelt, I started the engine.

the obvious icky stuff

• Most of you are pretty good about misspellings, so I won’t harp on it here. However, on occasion I do see oopsies on the first few pages. Granted, no one is 100-percent error free, but really work hard to make sure nothing silly like this happens, especially on those critical first pages. You don’t want the editor or agent to assume this is what the rest of the manuscript is like, do you?
• SOLUTION: Have someone help you check. Don’t trust WORD to correct all your mistakes. Watch the tricky “it’s” and “its”, “your” and “you’re”, and so on. Read your work aloud, too.

What’s the big idea?

• Mastering the basic mechanics of good fiction writing allows the editor or agent to focus on your story. It also prevents you from being rejected at Page One. Too much of something is usually not a good thing. Echoes, in particular, will call you out from the story. Thus, vigilance is required to ensure your invisibility (and your survival!). Read your work aloud. Be aware of common faux pas so you can send up the red flags when you read your own stuff. Get the help of writer friends. Finally, review your copy of Elements of Style or Self-Editing for Fiction Writers if you need to. A little awareness can go a long way.

Order WRITING FOR CHILDREN AND TEENS: A CRASH COURSE

Happy revising!

Cynthea

Add bookmark:

Dori Chaconas, author of picture books and easy readers, has just written a great article about rhythm and rhyme for picture book texts. [Read the article, icing the cake->http://www.dorichaconas.com/Icing%20the%20Cake%20page.htm].

Also visit a guest article by Kelly R. Fineman featured on this website. [Read post, how to critique rhyming children's poems->http://cynthealiu.com/2006/06/06/81/how-to-crtitique-rhyming-childrens-poems/].  

Add bookmark:

Here are the common things I notice when I evaluate picture book manuscripts.

Tuneless picture books

• In my opinion, picture books structure and rhythm, much like a tune. If I can’t hear your song when I’m reading your manuscript, the result is a text which reads like “heavy metal”. Discordant and jumbled. A tuneless picture book may have a beginning that’s too long, a middle that’s too short, and an abrupt ending. Or each sentence introduces a new pattern or rhythm. I’ll be writing more articles on the anatomy of the typical picture book, but for now, no matter what picture book you’re writing, it’s helpful to have tight structure–a clear story arc that has rhythm. If you can’t see the framework or the rhythm in your picture book (or even worse, you can’t tell where your beginning ends and your middle starts, etc.,), send up the red flags.
• Solution? Think beginning (setup), three obstacles (increasing difficulty towards climax), and an end. Or…if your book doesn’t fit that structure, identify your beginning (start and stop), your middle (start and stop) and your end (start and stop). Step back and look at how many lines or words these sections take up. If your beginning is 400 words out of 800, do you think your start might be a little long? (answer is yes). If your ending is twice as long as your middle, is something fishy? (yes again). Typically your beginning should be 1/5th or less of the whole story. Your middle, 3/5ths. And your end, 1/5th. Of course no story will fit this exactly, but use reasonable guidelines to help pinpoint where you’re running long, where you’re running short, etc., Also, if each section of your story (and the lines within the sections) introduces a new rhythm or pattern, your picture book won’t sound like a song. It’ll read like a short story or an “anecdote.” The main idea is this–to me, picture book writing isn’t that different from composing a catchy song. A tune. So strike up the band!

Extra, Extra!

• Extra! Extra! Read all about it! Now CUT IT. If you have words in your manuscript which could be nixed and have no effect on the intent of your story, that’s extra. To me, the tightest picture books depend on every word in the manuscript to tell the story.
• Solution? Look at each sentence in your manuscript. Do you have silly words like “that” all over the place? Have you given us a play-by-play of every facial reaction or minor movement made by your characters? Have you communicated the same idea multiple times? Did you take the long route to say something? Do you need so many lines of dialogue, thought, or action to get your point across? Go E.B. White (see Elements of Style) all over your manuscript and be amazed by the results. LESS IS MORE, particularly in the case of picture books.

Chatty picture books

• Another common thing I see are characters who “talk” the whole story. I ask you, how easy is it for your illustrator to DRAW conversation? (answer: not that easy).
• Solution? Are you trying to write a picture book that really should be expanded into a novel? Or a chapter book? If you’re quite certain your aim is to create a picture book, then here’s how to fix it. Shut your characters up. Narrate the conversation if you have to or decide if there’s a more visual way to tell the story. If your PB text is more than 1/3 dialogue, I’d say you’ve probably got a situation on your hands. And that 1/3 figure is being generous. Of course there are always exceptions to the rule, but scrutinize your text. Do you really need the “hello’s” and “how are you’s?”. Do you need to say “my tummy hurts” in three different ways back to back? Is there any way you can turn the intent of the conversation into actions that can be drawn instead?

Novels, magazine articles or short stories posing as picture books

• I see this more often than you’d think. I think there must be something going around where every children’s writer wants to write a picture book without really knowing if his or her voice is suited for picture books. Most storytelling does not come out of your head written like a picture book text. Chances are what you put down on that paper will have too much dialogue, too much description involving clothing and eye color, and the text will be way longer than necessary. Think of it this way: who naturally writes in refrains (or rhyme)? Who automatically tells stories using only a handful of words in a sentence? Hardly anyone. Too often, I see manuscripts which are billed as “picture books” when the style they’re written is is VERY MUCH like a short story or novel.
• Solution? Read picture book texts. Study them closely. Observe the sentence structure and length of your favorite books. The ones you want to write. Crack open a few novels. What’s your style? Can you write in the PB-style or not? My point is writing picture books is much harder than it looks. Another way of looking at it: are you good at short-hand? Cutting to the chase? Writing about the highlights only? Picture books these days are almost like “bullet-pointed” stories. They’re short, to the point, and allow plenty of room for the illustrator to fill in everything you left out. Which brings me to the next issue…

Picture books without the pictures

• this is when characters spend the entire time in one room OR spend the story talking OR the structure (or even content) isn’t there, so neither are the clear refrains or “scenes” an illustrator can illustrate.
• Solution? Here’s a fun exercise. Do what an editor would do. Imagine the page turns in your picture book and conjure up the picture that would be there on that spread. Do you find yourself in a pictureless black hole on certain pages? (BTW, eye-brow raising and a cough may not be a really great picture in a picture book). Pictureless text is not a picture book text. Make sure you’re story has REALLY INTERESTING pictures in it and they’re paced appropriately through the story. If it takes thirty-million lines to get to the next great picture, you know something is wrong. Don’t get lazy and hope it’ll all work out on the illustrator end somehow.

Mommy knows best

• Mommy fixes everything. (Or Grandma). Or some other boring adult.
• Solution? Write Mommy and the elderly out of the picture if they’re sole purpose is to guide or hand over the solution for the MC. Kids like to see the main character solving his own problems (so I’ve heard). Unless you’re a celebrity, you probably can’t get away with writing a book where Mom is the one who figures it out for the child.

No twist, no surprise

• These are the books where the outcome can be predicted from page one.
• Solution? Always try to figure out ways to take the story and twist the plot or the ending. Think of the predictable solution. Now make the opposite come true.

Slight or lacking kid appeal

• Here’s the part where I can only make guesses about a books marketability. In my view, the books that sell (assuming you’ve written the text in an illustratable way and it’s short) are ones that have 1) kid appeal and 2) something of real value to offer. If there is no value to the story, it might be labeled as “well-told but slight” by editors. So what is value? It can be anything from a nice message or a hilarious story. Or whatever the editor values in a story.
• Solution? If you don’t know if your book has any value, ask someone if they’d pay $16 for your book. Better yet, ask yourself: would you pay $16 for your book? If the answer is no or maybe, how can you make the answer: TOTALLY! Can you put your main character in a situation lots of kids can relate to? Can you raise the stakes for your character? Can you turn some adult characters into kids? Can you make the book so funny or so touching it would be stupid for anyone to say No? Always look for ways to push your story to the next level. Think of what it would take to get someone who’s never heard of you to lift your book from the shelf and carry it to the cash register. At worst, doing that is fun to imagine. At best, you’ll have a better book.

Loose picture books

• I might call something loose when all the ideas of the story are great, but the elements used to tell the story are “loose”. Or haphazard. Like picked randomly from nowhere. This is hard to explain in an article like this, but let me jump right to the solution. Perhaps the idea will be clearer.
• Solution: recycle elements you’ve introduced in the beginning and middle of your story in your ending. This might also be called “going full circle”. If the kid’s favorite food at the beginning of the story is nuts, and the resolution involves getting the kid to consume vegetables, perhaps there should be some nuts on that salad at the end. This is a bad example, but the point is LEVERAGE elements you introduce in the beginning and middle to fill out your end. This makes the story appear “tight”. Tight is good. Often this might require you to write your story “backwards.” When you’ve got the ending figured out, you may need to go back and revise. To plant the elements of the resolution in the beginning and/or middle. The result? An ending that is clever (if done correctly) and a tighter story. Go full circle. Make the story tight by reusing elements.

What’s the big idea?

• The main idea is picture book writing is not the same kind of writing you use in novels, short stories, or magazine articles. You must allow room for pictures in your text. You must become a master of GETTING TO THE POINT. You will be “composing” a story. Like one might compose a song. And finally, you must tell a great story that has economic value (or the very least, value to an editor).

Read more articles in the Revision 9-1-1 series, http://www.cynthealiu.com/category/revision/.

Order WRITING FOR CHILDREN AND TEENS: A CRASH COURSE

Happy revising,

Cynthea

Add bookmark:

Here is where you get to benefit even more from the fruits of my labor. You know all those free-tiques I do? After a while, I notice tendencies among you writers. I’ve seen some of the “issues” enough I’ve given them special names.

• Are you guilty of hammer-head?
• Are you an -ing addict? Or a serial when-or-as killer?
• Do you overwrite, under-write? Lose all sense of mind, body and space when it comes to setting?

Don’t get me wrong: all the free-tique manuscripts I see contain some pretty decent writing. Why? If you’ve found me, chances are you are dedicated to your craft. You actively participate in many of our clandestine activities on the Internet. You read. You write. You want this. But no matter where you are in this field (published or unpublished, award-winner or not), you’ve also done something in your work which might require a little revision 9-1-1.

Over the next couple of weeks, I’ll be doing a series of articles on revision. Inside these posts, I’ll list the most common issues I’ve seen in manuscripts today and offer suggestions on how to fix them.

• read post, revision 9-1-1 for novels: characters
• read post, revision 9-1-1 for novels: plot
• read post, revision 9-1-1 for novels: setting and description
• read post, revision 9-1-1 for fiction picture books
• read post, revision 9-1-1: writing mechanics

Order WRITING FOR CHILDREN AND TEENS: A CRASH COURSE

Add bookmark:

Let me clear up a myth about talking animals. You might have heard it before. “You shouldn’t write about talking animals. That’s a big no-no.” Yet you see hundred of books come out, starring them. What gives?

According to some, talking animals are hard to do. So? What if you’re a natural at it? Does that mean you shouldn’t write them? (Snoop says, “Heck no!”) There is one word of caution though when it comes to writing novel-length talking animal books. Finding an editor or agent who will openly admit they like to work with novel-length talking animal books is difficult. They RARELY advertise their secret love for yapping giraffes because so many anthropomorphic stories are written poorly. BUT if this is your passion, you must write your book anyway. And be on a serious lookout for editors/agents who have worked with them before.

I also think a lot of people get caught up on the “no talking animal” rule when it comes to picture books since a ton of PBs feature animals. But have no fear. If your characters must have four legs, write away. Most editors (if their house publishes talking animal books) won’t even blink when they see you’ve written something about an alligator who’s lost his wooby. Or you may leave the text open-ended and the editor can decide if she wants to make the children humans or reptiles. But please don’t stop yourself from writing stories with animals in them because you read or heard that was a no-no. Write what you love to write and write it as well as you would any book.

[Read my story, I dared to write a talking animal book->I dared to write a talking animal book] if you like to be entertained.

Add bookmark:

I credit the lovely Kelly R. Fineman for writing this article. I stink at talking about poetry so I leave the task to Kelly who is quite good at it.

1. Read it to yourself.

See if the words make sense and tell a story you can follow.

Look in particular for any words that seem like they were chosen specifically to fit (or force) the rhyme. Look also for scrambled sentence order — where people rearrange a sentence in a nonsensical way in order to end with a rhyming word. If there are any, note it. Forced rhyme is BAD rhyme.

Look for the usual things you look for in writing — good, solid word choices, grammar, punctuation, etc. Don’t get too crazy with punctuation because poets sometimes take liberties and it’s fine. Although using “its” when they meant “it’s” is NOT fine. Where something seems wrong or off to you, make a note.

If every verb in the poem is a form of “to be”, make a note — the poet most likely needs to go back and fix that (although maybe not always, as in the end of Sandra Boynton’s “The Going to Bed Book”: “the sky is blue/the sea is deep/we rock and rock and rock to sleep” — two lines with “is” in a row, both fine. Same with “roses are red, violets are blue, sugar is sweet/and so are you”.)

2. Read it aloud.

See if you fall into a rhythm (usually, you should).

See if you trip anywhere (usually, you shouldn’t). If you tripped because you stumbled over a word or mispronounced it, read it again. If you tripped because you had to alter your reading rhythm, it’s the poet’s fault, and you should note it.

If, as you read it, any of the alleged rhyming words don’t actually rhyme, note it. While there are devices such as slant rhyme and/or near rhyme, they aren’t typically favored in children’s rhyming poems. That said, there’s a new book out from Tony Mitton (one of my favorite British poets) called Once Upon a Tide which evidently rhymes “shore” with “saw”. I can’t come up with any dialect in the English language where those two rhyme, but hey, whatever.

Same goes for words that look like they might rhyme due to similar endings, but aren’t pronounced alike (e.g., through and though). Those sorts of “rhymes” used to be favored in the 1800s in sonnets and the like, and are still used in some poetic forms, but not in most kids’ poems and certainly not if everything else actually rhymes.

Cynthea adds: have your friends read it aloud. And lots of them. Have these friends note where they tripped. People have all different sorts of cadence, dialect, inflection in their own speech. You want to try to keep the rhyme as universally acceptable as possible.

3. Do the math.

Count up syllables. In general, rhyming poetry tends to be metrical (regulated counts), although it needn’t be because the focus should be on the number of stressed syllables per line.

Metrical with regulated syllable count:
Roses are red (4)
Violets are blue (4) *Note: violets here has two syllables (VI-lets), and not three (VI-o-lets). More on that in a moment
Sugar is sweet (4)
And so are you (4)

Metrical with stressed feet (but not syllable count):
Down by the seashore (2 beats, 5 syllables)
Bess and I (2 beats, 3 syllables)
stood on the sand (2 beats, 4 syllables)
and looked at the sky (2 beats, 5 syllables).
(from Once Upon a Tide by Tony Mitton)

If you clap to the second one, you clap twice per line (down, seashore, Bess, I, stood, sand, looked, sky).

In most cases, one of the above ways of counting and/or clapping should work as you go along. If at any point the clapping part goes awry, there’s a problem, and you should alert the poet.

More about the syllable thing: the way a word is pronounced varies according to where you live, as you well know. In certain cases, folks who’ve lived the same place their entire lives are unaware that others pronounce words differently, and assume that they are correct. Not that you can rhyme it with anything either way, but “orange” is a two-syllable word. (Duh, Kelly, you say.) And yet in some areas of the U.S., it is pronounced as a single-syllable word: “ornge”.

Similarly, the word “roof” is pronounce with a long “OO” most places, but in the area around Pittsburgh, PA (and maybe in others, it is pronounced to rhyme with a short “oo”, as in the word “look”). You want to keep an eye out for any words that are being used in a dialectical manner, and not in their most commonly accepted pronunciation. Because most editors go with the usual, official pronunciations, and not regionalisms (unless the regional word is spelled out somehow, like “chowdah” for “chowder” in New England).

And there you have it folks!

You may read more ponderings from Kelly on her blog Writing and Ruminating. Note: I am not responsible for anything she says over there. Heheh!

Happy revising,

Cynthea

Add bookmark:

So things haven’t gone as you’d hoped. Your manuscript went off months ago, and your phone didn’t ring off the hook with five editors or agents vying for your awesome book.
You find yourself wondering – what are they doing with my manuscript?

Did it get lost in the mail?
Did my dog Rufus eat my rejection letter?
Did I even include my manuscript in the submission?!
Status queries is a touchy subject where people will have different opinions. Especially about:

1. When to query for status
2. How to query for status

I’ll give you my take on status queries.
I don’t status query.* (See below for one exception.)

Q: Gasp! Why?
A: I view status queries as a waste of time for both you and the editor or agent. You can also be an annoyance if:

1. You’ve status-queried too soon from the editor’s or agent’s point of view.
2. You’ve somehow given the editor or agent the impression that you can’t trust her to get to it when she gets to it.

You will never be able to control how an editor or agent will interpret your status query. While it is doubtful that editor or agent will reject your submission simply because you queried for status, it’s not exactly a positive interaction to have with him or her. At best, it is a neutral or a negative one. But more importantly, this is about you and your anxiety over something that is beyond your control.
Trust the system.

Q: But how do you get your questions about the status of your manuscript answered?
A: I make logical assumptions.

1. If my book had sold or if the agent had wanted to rep me, he would find a way to reach me via email or phone. (The magazine market is a bit different though. I’m only going to speak to the fiction book market). Therefore, if the person had responded by mail, and I didn’t get it somehow, it was probably a rejection one way or another.
2. If I never hear from them, no biggie. There are plenty of agents or editors in the sea. And there is nothing that precludes me from sending a different book to them – into the black hole – if I so wish. Getting no response has only happened to me once. I learned from Blue Board that other people never heard from this editor either.
3. This brings me to a relevant point: there is a trend with many publishing houses and literary agencies where editors and agents will not respond unless they are interested.
4. Finally, there’s one more conclusion I can draw. The editor or agent hasn’t gotten to it yet. Bingo!

Please note: If you simply must, must, must have closure, do what you need to do. Sometimes things do get lost in the shuffle, but always make sure you check the publisher’s guidelines and wait beyond the expected response time before querying.

* There is one case when I do a status query:
The editor or agent has specified that she would like me to do so if a certain amount of time has passed (not too common). She wants me to nudge. I will perform the status query as the editor or agent requests, either by phone (yes, they sometimes ask for a call), by email, or by letter.

Q: But what if my manuscript is on an exclusive and they’ve had it forever?
A: Perhaps you haven’t read this post, Exclusive Submission or Simultaneous Submission?. If you had, you would have known to set an expiration date on your exclusive. This date either matches what the submission guidelines were for the recipient. Or it was a date established by you if there were no guidelines and you had to grant an exclusive because of certain circumstances.
Setting an expiration date eliminates the need to let the editor know that the exclusive no longer applies. There is also no need to nudge or status query.
If you did give an exclusive and you’d like to set an expiration date with the editor or agent, then you need to give the person a status update. Read my related post, Status Updates: When and How to Do It. This article covers the cases in which you should contact the editor or agent post-submission.

Return to step nine – wait if you are taking the crash course.

Add bookmark:

THIS ARTICLE APPLIES TO ALL CHILDREN’S BOOK MANUSCRIPTS – INCLUDING PICTURE BOOKS.

Here’s what I do in Microsoft Word. (If you need a visual, an example is included in the book version of my Crash Course.)

Font and Paragraphing

• Twelve point font. Times New Roman. (Courier is another acceptable option – but that font hogs up the paper). Whatever you do, please don’t try to flag the attention of an editor by using splashy font. All that will do is make you look like an amateur.
• Double space your manuscript. How? – hit ctrl+A to select the body of your text, then go to the menu at the top of Word and select Format->Paragraph. A new window will pop-up. Under Line Spacing: select EXACTLY. Under At: enter “25″ Click OK. This will make your line spaces just over double your font size. And there you have it.

Page 1 Header information

You will want the header of the first page of your manuscript to be different than the rest of the manuscript. To accomplish this, go to File->Page Setup. Then click on the Layout tab. Check the Different First Page box.Now go to the first page of your document and put your contact information in the HEADER.

• To get to the header, from the menu up top, click View->Header and Footer. Your header will “open” on the page.
• On the left side, enter your first and last name. Hit enter.
• Enter your street address. Hit enter.
• Enter you city, state and zip. Hit enter.
• Enter your phone number. Hit enter.
• Then your email address. Hit enter.

On the right side, you’ll want to specify your word count. Like “Word Count~ 500″. To place this statement on the first line of your header, you’ll need to set a Right Tab.

• To do this, click on that first line after your last name so your cursor is there. Then select from the menu Format->Tab. A pop-up window will appear. Under Tab Stop Position: enter 6″. Under Alignment, click on Right. Then click the SET button in that window.
• Now hit the tab key on your keyboard and notice what happens. Your cursor will flush right.
• Enter your word count and click out of the header.

Title your work

Now hit Enter 10-12 times- you should be about half-way down the page. Enter your title in all caps. NO BOLDING. NO UNDERLINE. I never bother with a byline since it’s assumed from the header. Hit enter twice and begin. And please, DO NOT PUT A COPYRIGHT on there. There is no need and some say, the appearance of a copyright on the manuscript will flag you as an amateur. Want to know why? Your text is automatically copyrighted as soon as you write it. So putting the symbol on your document only points out to an editor or an agent that you might not know this. If you want to know more on copyright, read this from Wikipedia.

Chapter Titles for Chaptered Books

If your book is chaptered, center the chapter title and write “CHAPTER ONE–CHAPTER TITLE” in all caps.

Then hit enter twice again. Your subsequent chapters should each begin a new page, so learn how to insert a page break. Select Insert-> Break. Click Page Break. Done. Eight hits to the enter key will be where you start with the chapter title. Two Enters to start the text.

Your story text

Indent paragraphs. To indent, it’s as simple as hitting the Tab key on your keyboard. Please don’t hit the space bar five times. This is a real pain in the neck and totally unnecessary. This was the old school way of doing things before the arrival of the personal computer.

The same goes for spacing between sentences. ONE SPACE is the standard now. Two spaces is what you do on a typewriter. So with that in mind, if you ARE using a typewriter, then follow the old rules. But everything I am describing here assumes we have a computer and we’re using Word or Works.

Do not double-space (hit enter key twice) between paragraphs unless this is intentional for your story-telling.

Slug and Page Numbers

On page 2 and every page thereafter, a slug (your last name, a slash, then keywords from the title) and a page number should appear in the header. To do this, click into the header as described before.

• Enter your SLUG in the upper left. This is LAST NAME / KEYWORDS FROM TITLE. Like LIU / JOHNNY’S DAY OFF
• Next, insert a page number by setting a right tab like we did before and clicking the # icon in the header/footer toolbar.

Now your slug and page number will appear in every page header after page one automatically.
Phew! Your done!

For an example of what your final product might look like, see the paperback version of WRITING FOR CHILDREN AND TEENS: A CRASH COURSE.

If you’re taking my online crash course, you may return to step three – write.

Add bookmark: